Did this young lady get into her mom's yogurt, which mom had carefully placed up on the dinner table while she had to leave the room for a moment? The evidence is undeniable. I have taken to calling her "Legion." Actually, of course, she's considerably less demonic now than when she joined us early this year.
She's already managed to get herself snakebit this summer, probably by a cottonmouth. It didn't make her very sick. Our nextdoor neighbors' cat was struck by a rattlesnake on Labor Day, occasioning a frantic trip in to Corpus to the emergency vet, where they specialize in wildly expensive treatment for customers (like me) who are devoted to their animals beyond the point of financial good sense. The local vet doesn't even carry antivenin, and had in fact told us that it wasn't available for cats. Wrongo! It costs a bloody fortune, but you can get it. They gave the cat a three-day fentanyl patch, if you can believe that. I agitated for one of those for my poor aunt in the nursing home for six months before I got it. Fentanyl, the king of pain relief, is orders of magnitude beyond morphine.
But I must say, within a few days the swelling had disappeared. The cat appears to have dodged all of the truly horrifying effects you often see with rattler bites, like necrosis. The effects of an untreated rattlesnake bite are something I wouldn't wish on anyone, and I take this opportunity again to trumpet the virtues of inexpensive rattlesnake vaccine for your dogs. (I gather there isn't a vaccine for cats. Or people.)
Update a few moments later: That's our erstwhile glass coffee-table top you see in ruins there. OK, so maybe she's not really that much less demonic.
16 comments:
It's often the case that animals get better and less-expensive care than humans. You can get all sorts of things for your horse or dog over the counter at a feed store, for a fraction of the cost of the same medicine for a human being; and without needing a doctor visit or prescription to add to the cost.
However much the patch cost for your cat, it was surely cheaper than the one for your aunt. Easier to get, too.
I assume this is because cats don't sue for malpractice very often.
Legion, heheh, is just doing what comes naturally.
Flip Wilson's acquaintance Geraldine used to have a justification for behaving thusly.
"It's often the case that animals get better and less-expensive care than humans."
Which is why I've been cozying up to our vets ever since O-care appeared on the political horizon.
Tex I wish you could find a Vet like Dr. Orr and his offspring, one of the better ones we have down here in Green Acres. As a rule they charge a lot less than most of the rest but are every bit as good as any of the others.
Now our equine vet is a specialist and she is far and away a better vet than her contemporaries. At least when it comes to horses. I don't balk at her fees. She and the surgical team at UGA saved Good Old Boy's life.
"They gave the cat a three-day fentanyl patch, if you can believe that. I agitated for one of those for my poor aunt in the nursing home for six months before I got it."
Yeah, I can believe it. During my spinal cord repair/recovery/rehab I was on that damned patch. I wound up on the 100 mcg patch, which was supposed to last for three days, but my system absorbed it within 36 hours... Telling my pain doc of this, the doc doubled my prescription! Between that, the Oxy-mumble scripts, the half dozen other scripts and the mood magic drugs prescribed due to, 'the obvious need caused by the need to take all the other scripts I eventually became aware of the fact that drugs do kill.
With that realization in my anxious little mind, I told my gaggle of doctors I wanted to end all the drugs and asked them to help me taper off. They told me I was nuts! So I had to cold-turkey on my own. It wasn't pretty.
The difficulty in starting and/or stopping the use of such drugs depends on the medical professional(s) and the patient/condition involved. I'm sure if I had wanted, and continued to pay the price, --the cost associated in usage was, in my case, not just money-- I could have stayed in high orbit, to this day.
Sorry about the rant. I'm like the ex-smoker who gets spun up when asked about smoking.
In my 96-year-old aunt's case, she was in hospice care, in intractable pain, and never expected to be able to leave her bed, so it would have been best, I think, to shed all the usual concerns we have about addiction. I do understand why doctors would and should be awfully careful about prescribing that stuff to anyone who's expected to recover.
I actually like our local vets very much. They're compassionate and sensible in their treatment without expecting their clients to get second mortgages to pay for it all. (Antivenin will knock a big hole in $1,000.) I trust their instincts for when it's time to stop putting an elderly, sick pet through more treatments. But for those times when you want to open the money tap at full flow and save a beloved pet who's young and has a good shot at a full recovery with aggressive treatment, the emergency clinic in the city is the way to go.
"In my 96-year-old aunt's case, she was in hospice care, in intractable pain, and never expected to be able to leave her bed, so it would have been best, I think, to shed all the usual concerns we have about addiction."
In the case of your Aunt, I agree.
"I do understand why doctors would and should be awfully careful about prescribing that stuff to anyone who's expected to recover."
Having seen the number of doctors I saw during my little episode, and having had the illusion that all doc's are good docs razed, --I rarely had a need for medical attention prior to that point, other than the odd stitching up job-- I think I'll just hush now.
I asked Ye Olde Vet why critter care cost less than human care (unless you are a racehorse) and she said: "gerbils don't vote." So outside certain broad limits, critter medicine is not regulated like human care, you don't have federal involvement and all the associated costs.
LittleRed1
Very few people buy pet health insurance, so there's real price information operating at the level of the consumer who lays out the bucks. Also, we don't yet subject our pets to the kind of medical horrorshow that very ill people so often get stuck in before they die.
That's our erstwhile glass coffee-table top you see in ruins there.
Yeah, I can see why you'd want to spend a lot of money saving a dog like that. :)
"Very few people buy pet health insurance, so there's real price information operating at the level of the consumer who lays out the bucks."
Yup. As I've mentioned before, you might be surprised if you ask your doctor's office how much a visit/procedure will cost prior to the visit. Then ask how much of a discount you can get paying cash, in full, at the time of the visit, removing all responsibility from the doctor/practice for dealing with insurance provider(s). I know I've been pleasantly surprised.
We haven't been forced to make any decisions about expensive medical care for her yet. I'm not sure I like her chances if we do.
Oh, who'm I kidding. I'll be a sucker for it just like always.
...having had the illusion that all doc's are good docs razed....
My flight surgeon in Germany was a bone doctor. He had successfully wangled a tour as a flight surgeon because he wanted to fly, but his vision wouldn't let him. However, the USAF requires its flight surgeons to experience the environment of its pilots (but not that of its weapons controllers, who also were on flight duty, even though we "flew" radar consoles), so he was required to fly as a flight surgeon.
I applauded his initiative, but I knew as much medicine as he did. When I got sick, I had to tell him what I had, what he should prescribe for it, and that drug's impact on my flight status.
I actually like our local vets very much.
As do I mine here in Plano. I had a cat a few years ago who had contracted an ultimately fatal disease. In its initial attack, she needed heavy, long-term care and feeding through a tube until her strength, and interest in food, came back. This could have gotten expensive, but the vet, entirely of his own accord, capped the expenses until she recovered.
Eric Hines
We spent $400-plus on my wife's pet duck after it had been mauled by a mountian lion.
Did you at least get the pelt off the lion?
I think I recognize that look.
The dog who thinks she may have done wrong, but hopes you won't notice.
You're near Corpus (Christi, I have to expect)? As that is my original neck of the woods, I have to ask where exactly are you?
Just north of Rockport, near Goose Island State Park (Lamar Peninsula).
Yes I did. I need one more to make a nice coat for missus.
She can keep it with the coonskin cap she won't wear.
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